09 Apr Streamlining Benefits Administration With Better HR Processes
Tired of spending hours each week on benefits administration?
Like most HR teams, you’re drowning in compliance paperwork, enrollment frustrations and benefits tasks that take up unnecessary time. Time you could be spending on things that actually drive business growth.
There’s a problem though…
Health insurance compliance for employers keeps getting harder. Costs are rising. Regulations keep changing. If you don’t stay on top of it all, the penalties can be severe.
Fortunately, streamlining your benefits administration doesn’t have to be difficult or time-consuming. With the right set of HR processes in place, any sized business can simplify compliance, avoid costly mistakes and save time.
What you’re going to learn:
- Benefits administration is too challenging for most teams
- There are three HR processes that can simplify compliance
- How to build your own streamlined benefits administration workflow
- How to keep your team compliant in the long-run
Let’s get into it…
Why Benefits Administration Is So Challenging
Benefits administration is one of those thankless jobs that no one wants to do but everyone has to.
Deloitte estimates that HR teams spend about 57% of their total work time on administrative tasks such as compliance reporting, payroll processing and benefits management.
That’s more than half your day gone forever on boring admin.
And costs just keep rising. Did you know the average annual premium for employer-sponsored family health coverage hit $26,993 this year? That’s an increase of 6% just from last year.
Attempting to manage those costs AND stay compliant with federal and state regulations is overwhelming.
But here’s the kicker…
Employer health plan compliance isn’t simply about knowing the rules. It’s about selecting the right group health plans for businesses and then managing every detail of those plans correctly. From ACA reporting deadlines to mental health parity laws, there’s a lot to know and keep straight.
Without streamlined benefits administration, it’s a disaster waiting to happen. Administrative mistakes lead to tons of wasted time, frustrated employees and even potential legal liabilities.
How good are your current HR processes?
The Core HR Processes That Streamline Compliance
Thankfully, there’s a solution. Simplify and improve the HR processes that have the biggest impact. Here are the 3 core processes every business needs to streamline benefits administration.
Create A Central Hub For All Benefits Information
This is by far where most businesses struggle. They try to keep track of plan details, enrollment records, compliance documents and costs across spreadsheets, emails, handwritten notes or multiple software platforms. By the time open enrollment rolls around or they get audited, no one can find anything!
Solution: store all benefits related info in a central system. Whether that’s your payroll provider, HRIS or benefits administration platform doesn’t matter. Just make sure all plan details, enrollment files and compliance documents are kept together in one place. It’s exponentially easier to stay organised this way.
Automate As Many Repetitive Tasks As Possible
Enrolling new employees. Checking eligibility weekly. Generating compliance reports. Sending renewal reminders. The list goes on and on. These repetitive tasks can take up hours of your week. Automating them not only saves time but also eliminates risk of human error.
Build A Comprehensive Compliance Calendar
Did you know that just one missing deadline can cost employers thousands in fines? ACA reporting deadlines, ERISA document filings, COBRA notices, summary plan descriptions… If any of these things aren’t done by the deadline, you’ll get hit with fines.
Creating and maintaining a compliance calendar is easily the best way to ensure you never miss a deadline. Outline all yearly deadlines, assign responsibility to specific team members and set alerts several weeks in advance. Better yet, use a tool that syncs with your central benefits platform.
How To Build A Streamlined Benefits Workflow
It’s time for the good stuff. Here’s exactly how to build your own streamlined benefits administration workflow step-by-step.
Step 1: Know Your Starting Point
Before jumping into building your dream benefits workflow, you have to know where you currently stand. What are your current bottlenecks? Where do most administrative mistakes happen?
Common areas include manual data entry, having to use outdated paper enrollment forms, not having clear responsibility for certain compliance tasks.
Knowing exactly where you struggle now will help you know what to improve moving forward.
Step 2: Map Out Clear Roles And Responsibilities
This step shouldn’t be confused with step 1. Once you know your weak spots, it’s time to proactively prevent future administrative nightmares by mapping out clear roles and responsibilities.
Who is in charge of enrollment? Who manages compliance filings? Who communicates plan changes to employees? etc.
Whenever you have clear expectations and set responsibilities for each part of the process, things will run much smoother. There will be less confusion, task overlap and forgotten tasks.
Step 3: Standardise Your Communication
Communication is arguably the biggest reason why administration becomes such a headache.
Employees don’t understand their benefits options. Managers aren’t sure of enrollment deadlines. HR gets bombarded with questions at the last minute.
By taking the time to create standard templates and schedules for all benefits communications, you’ll avoid a ton of these problems. This includes open enrollment guides, plan comparison charts, and regular employee communications when benefits changes occur. Communicate clearly and often!
Step 4: Schedule Regular Reviews To Optimise Your Process
And here’s what most businesses get wrong with their benefits administration process…
They make it perfect. Or at least good enough. And then they never look at it again.
Employer health plan compliance is not a “set it and forget it” situation. Regulations change constantly. Plan costs rise and fall. Employee needs evolve as your team grows.
Schedule a quarterly benefits administration review to keep your process running as efficiently as possible.
Keeping Your Team Compliant, Long-Term
Installing the right processes is great but how do you make sure they last? Here are a few tips to keep your team compliant long-term.
Train Your Team On Compliance Regulations
Again, compliance regulations are always changing. Make sure your team fully understands ALL aspects of your benefits plans including ACA compliance, mental health parity laws, transparency regulations, etc. Host quarterly training sessions to keep everyone up to date.
Work With Trusted Partners To Fill In The Gaps
No HR team has all the answers. Bring on benefits advisors, legal counsel, and tech platforms to help ensure you’re covered and staying compliant. Things your partners should do:
- Keep your team updated on any regulatory changes that may impact your business
- Advising you on plan design, managing rising costs and more
- Assisting with audits and readiness for compliance reviews
Track Key Metrics To Identify Areas Of Improvement
Want your benefits administration workflow to get even better?
Start measuring everything. Enrollment percentages, claims costs, employee satisfaction with benefits, administrative hours spent on benefits related tasks. You name it.
Not only will these metrics help you celebrate your process strengths, but they’ll highlight opportunities for improvement.
Bringing It All Together
Taking the time to streamline your benefits administration workflow is one of the best investments any sized business can make.
Benefits? It saves you time, reduces your chances of costly compliance errors and helps employees feel more confident about their benefits.
Before you go, let’s review what was covered:
- Store ALL benefits information in one place
- Automate as many repetitive tasks as possible
- Use a calendar to track compliance deadlines
- Map out clear roles and responsibilities
- Standardise your communications
- Schedule quarterly reviews to optimise the process
- Train your team and work with trusted partners
- Keep your eye on key metrics
Employer-sponsored health plan compliance isn’t meant to be a headache. Take control of your benefits administration with the right HR processes and it becomes pretty simple. As your business grows and adapts, your benefits processes should too. Small improvements over time lead to massive leaps of change.
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